After having returned back to my hotel room from diving the Mahi and LCD wrecks, I rinsed off my gear and hung it up to dry, trying to get ready for my next dives that night. While diving, the wife and son took it upon themselves to walk around Waikiki, just kinda see what they see and look around. Shortly after I got done taking care of my gear, the wife and son returned to the hotel room. I was down loading the photos from the previous dives when they came in. I was all jazzed and excited from just having done some awsome dives, however my wife and son were pretty wore out, having walked all day. I showed them the photos from the dives and they were in awe at all the cool stuff I had seen. So far, just from the two dives I did with Aaron’s dive shop. I did my first boat dive as well as back roll entry.
Another first was to happen with my next set of Dives with Kaimana divers, my first night dives. Also unbeknownst to me, there would be other firsts on those dives as well. Gabe Scotti and Chris Scales of Kaimana divers picked me up from my hotel the Hilton Hawaiian Village at about 4pm. They were a very cool couple of guys, and were quite fun just doing the drive from the hotel to the docks, about a 35 minute drive I think. Anyway, when we got to the docks we met up with the others who would be diving with us, all in all, a really cool group of people.We all boarded the "Honey Anne" boat and headed out to a site called "Spitting Caves" This was a twilight dive, and was also a drift dive, another first for me. Max depth was I think about 60 feet on this dive (I don’t have my log book infront of me at the moment so I’m not sure) Anyway, the twilight drift dive was an awsome experience for me! Wow was it so much fun! (Remember, I am a new diver) The sea life that started coming out was spectacular! Beautiful corals as well. We had about 30 minutes of bottom time, and I was just having a blast drifting along with the group seeing all the sites and critters!
After we rejoined the boat the "Honey Anne" We had about a 30 minute surface interval enroute to our next dive site. We were to dive the famed Corsair wreck, however due to exceptionally strong currents, that dive site was scrubed. We then went to a site called Kokos Caverns. Max depth there was about 65 feet. By this time it was truly dark out This was my first night dive. We saw LOADS of cool critters! Octopi, crabs, moreys, cool looking fish, the list goes on and on! One minor incident occured, I got bumped into by another diver, unintentially, and I incidentally bumped into a sea urchen, and ended up having to pull 6 spines out of my left arm. After we surfaced I told Gabe what had happened and showed him the mark that the spines had made, and he said, "You got a Hawaiian tattoo!" It looked kinda like tattoo ink in a circle shape, slightly smaller than a dime.Suprisingly it wasnt too painfill, but it did hurt a little bit.
After we got back to the docks everybody got thier gear in order and packed up in thier respective vehicles. We all decided to meet up at a local wattering hole / cafe type place, damn it if I can’t remember the name, but it really seemed to be quite the happening place. Lotts of people dancing, music playing, and the food was great! And of corse a nice tottie or two went down well. We got together and filled out our logs and talked and had a wonderful time!
Afterwards Gabe and Chris took me back to my hotel, arrived back there at around 11pm. When my wife asked me what took soo long, I told her "But dear, we had to decompress, you wouldn’t want me getting the bends now would you?" Well needless to say she didn’t go for that excuse!
Anyway, Gabe and Chris of Kaimana divers were FANTASTIC! Great fun just to hang out with, but were also awsome divers, and great hosts! Showed us some terrific underwater stuff, simply put we all had a great time with them! If you find yourself on Oahu, definately hook up with Gabe and Chris of Kaimana divers, they will definately show you a fantastic time diving! And a fantastic time decompressing too!
This completes "Diving on Oahu, HI (Part Two)" Stay tuned for Diving on Oahu, HI (Part Three)